The NBA's 65-Game Rule and the 3-2-1 Lottery

Timeline

1. 2019Flattened lottery odds take effect after the 2017 reform.
2. Apr 2023The new CBA sets a 65-game minimum for major awards.
3. Sep 2023The NBA announces a Player Participation Policy for star players.
4. Feb 13, 2026The NBA fines the Jazz $500,000 and the Pacers $100,000.
5. May 28, 2026Owners approve the 3-2-1 Lottery, effective for the 2027 draft.
6. 2027–2029The 3-2-1 Lottery applies for three drafts, then requires a new vote.

The ethical issues

• Player health versus fan expectations.
• Competitive integrity: whether resting or benching players to lose is cheating.
• Incentive design: whether rules should punish the worst teams.
• League power: discretion to fine teams and alter draft positions.
• Fairness to teams that are bad without tanking.

Stakeholders

Stakeholder	Interests & obligations
Players	Health, awards and contract incentives.
Fans and ticket buyers	Seeing stars and competitive games.
Teams	Roster flexibility and rebuilding.
The NBA	Integrity and media value.
Broadcasters	Star availability for national games.
Medical staff	Independent judgment on player health.

The case

Two practices have long worried the NBA: resting healthy stars, often called load management, and losing to improve draft position.^[1][2] Starting with the 2019 draft, the league flattened lottery odds so the three worst teams each had a 14% chance at the top pick.^[1]

Background

The lottery itself was created as an anti-tanking measure. Introduced in 1985, it first drew envelopes from a hopper to decide the order among the seven teams with the worst records, and the rest picked in reverse order of their records.^[1] That envelope system was used until 1989 and replaced in 1990 by a weighted lottery that gave worse teams better odds for the top three picks.^[1] The weighting reduced the reward for being worst without removing it. Under the system before 2019, the worst team had a 25% chance at the first pick, and the 2019 changes were designed to discourage teams from chasing the worst record.^[1]

The lottery’s results show how little losing guarantees. Since the weighted system began in 1990, only seven teams with the worst record have won the lottery, and only four with the second-worst.^[1] In 2008 and 2014, the Chicago Bulls and Cleveland Cavaliers won with odds of under 2%.^[1]

The rules and governance

The 65-game rule is a product of collective bargaining, so it binds players and teams through the 2023 CBA, with the players’ union as a party.^[4] The Player Participation Policy, by contrast, is a league policy, enforced by the commissioner through fines on teams.^[3] The 2026 fines on the Jazz and Pacers showed the league using its integrity powers against conduct that falls short of deliberately losing, including relying on an independent physician to judge whether held-out players could have played.^[5]

The 3-2-1 lottery goes further by giving the league discretion. The commissioner can reduce lottery odds, change draft positions and fine teams for tanking, powers that require judgments about intent.^[6][7] Those powers apply to the 2027 through 2029 drafts, after which owners can review the system.^[6]

The 65-game rule

The 2023 collective bargaining agreement required players to appear in at least 65 games to be eligible for awards such as Most Valuable Player and All-NBA teams.^[2][4] A game counts if a player plays at least 20 minutes, with up to two “near misses” of at least 15 minutes, and there are protections for season-ending injuries.^[4]

The Player Participation Policy

For 2023–24, the league adopted a policy aimed at stars, defined as players named All-Star or All-NBA in any of the previous three seasons.^[3] Teams may not rest more than one star in the same game, must make stars available for national TV games, and must have resting players present and visible to fans.^[3] Fines start at $100,000 and escalate to $1.25 million for a third violation.^[3] The league office automatically investigates when multiple stars miss the same game, when a star misses a national TV or In-Season Tournament game, or when team staff say something that contradicts a player’s injury report.^[3] Absences for multi-game injuries, approved back-to-back restrictions and bona fide personal reasons such as “birth of child, death in family” are generally exempt.^[3] Teams must also avoid long-term “shutdowns” of stars “in circumstances affecting the integrity of the game,” and the league can use a former team physician as an independent reviewer of whether a player could have played.^[3] Players who refuse to play without reasonable cause lose 1/91.6 of their base pay per game.^[3] Commissioner Adam Silver said load management had gone “too far” but added that the policy did not mean “players are expected to play through injuries.”^[2]

The 2026 fines

In February 2026, the NBA fined the Utah Jazz $500,000 for removing two top players before the fourth quarter of two games and not returning them while the outcomes were in doubt.^[5] It fined the Indiana Pacers $100,000 after an independent physician found that three starters held out of a game could have played.^[5] The physician found they could have played “including by playing reduced minutes,” and the league added that the team could instead have spread the absences across games “in a way that would have better promoted compliance with the Policy.”^[5] The Jazz penalty was for “conduct detrimental to the league” rather than under the participation policy, because the players had not been held out but pulled from games they were able to finish.^[5] Silver said such behavior “undermines the foundation of NBA competition.”^[5] His full statement called it “overt behavior like this that prioritizes draft position over winning,” and he said the league was working with its Competition Committee and Board of Governors “to root out this type of conduct.”^[5]

The 3-2-1 Lottery

On May 28, 2026, owners approved a new lottery for the 2027 through 2029 drafts.^[6] It expands the lottery from 14 to 16 teams. Non-playoff, non-play-in teams receive three balls, except the three worst teams, which are “draft relegated” to two balls; play-in teams receive two or one.^[6] Teams cannot win the top pick in consecutive years, and the league gained authority to reduce lottery odds, change draft positions and impose fines for tanking.^[6][7] A team’s own pick also cannot land in the top five three years running, whether the team still holds it or has traded it, and new trades cannot carry top-12 to top-15 protections.^[6] Draft-relegated teams pick no lower than 12th; other lottery teams can fall to 16th.^[6]

The new odds are deliberately flat. The three worst teams each have a 5.4% chance at the first pick, the same as the 9th and 10th play-in seeds. The other non-play-in teams have 8.1%, and the losers of the 7-versus-8 play-in games have 2.7%.^[7] The league official who led the design said the bottom ten teams still hold “roughly 73% of the odds,” but “it’s just not as explicit a return on being the bottom team.”^[7] The league’s head of basketball operations explained why fines alone were not enough: “If it’s a $10 million fine, is it worth to just keep taking a fine?”^[7]

Aftermath

The last lottery under the old system, on May 10, 2026, went to the Washington Wizards. They had finished 17-65 and shared the best odds, 14%, with Brooklyn and Indiana. The AP noted that three consecutive losing seasons, the worst in the franchise’s history, had “finally paid off.”^[8] Silver said there had been “largely agreement among our team owners, general managers and our coaches and ultimately the Players Association” that changes were needed.^[7] He added that teams would “have an incentive to win all of their games.”^[7] The 2026–27 season is the first played under the new incentives. Whether the commissioner’s new powers to judge tanking are ever used, and how teams adapt to flattened odds, will decide whether owners keep the system when it expires after the 2029 draft.^[6]

The core dilemma

How can a league protect fans and competitive integrity without forcing injured players to play or punishing teams that are simply bad?

Competing values

Player health competes with fan expectations. Competitive integrity competes with team autonomy. Incentive design competes with fairness to the weakest teams. League discretion competes with predictable rules.

Strongest arguments

For the reforms: Fans and broadcasters pay to see stars; the league documented teams sitting healthy players; and changing incentives is fairer than relying only on fines.^[2][5][6]

Against the reforms: Award thresholds may pressure players to play through pain, and penalizing the worst teams may harm franchises that lose for reasons beyond their control.^[2][4]

Applying the frameworks

Utilitarian

Consequentialists weigh fan experience, broadcast value and competitive integrity against player health and teams’ rational long-term planning. Rules that reduce the payoff to losing aim to improve the product for most fans, but heavy participation requirements may raise injury risk, which the lens must count.

Kantian (duty)

A Kantian lens asks whether deliberately losing deceives fans and opponents who expect a genuine effort. It also asks whether forcing players to play to qualify for awards treats them as means to the league’s commercial ends, or whether the rules are a fair, mutually agreed term of employment.

Virtue

Virtue ethics asks what competitive character a league wants to encourage. Effort and integrity are virtues in sport. A culture of strategic losing or resting healthy stars sends a different message, especially to young players and fans who learn what sport values.

Walk it through: the Simple Decision Model

1. Spot the issue. You are an NBA team’s general manager in early 2026, out of playoff contention, deciding how to manage your stars’ minutes. The stakeholders include players, fans, season-ticket holders, broadcasters, opponents and the league. The codes in play are the CBA’s 65-game rule, the Player Participation Policy and the league’s integrity rules.
2. Gather facts. What do your medical staff say about each player’s condition? How does the lottery reward losing this season, and what penalties have others received?
3. Test options. Options: (a) rest stars heavily to improve draft position; (b) play them normally while managing workload under medical advice; (c) develop young players while keeping stars available as the policy requires. Weigh long-term team building against integrity and fan obligations.
4. Check codes and law. Are you documenting medical decisions honestly? Would an independent physician agree with your choices?
5. Decide and document. Record the medical basis for each player decision.
6. Communicate and follow up. Communicate openly with fans and the league about player availability, and comply promptly with league inquiries.

What’s settled and what’s contested

Settled: The 65-game rule, the participation policy, the 2026 fines and the 3-2-1 Lottery are in force.^[3][4][5][6]

Contested: Whether the rules reduce tanking and load management, whether they affect player health, and how the league will use its new disciplinary powers.^[7]

Why this case matters

These reforms show a league redesigning incentives to align teams’ interests with fans’ interests. They highlight the tension between health, entertainment and fairness, and test whether rules can succeed where moral appeals have failed.

Key terms

Rules vs. spirit of the game

Rules are the written minimum; the spirit is the fairness and respect the rules exist to protect. Rules set the floor; spirit sets the ceiling.

Gamesmanship

Pushing the rules to their limits, without technically breaking them, to gain an edge. It tests, and can erode, the game.

Trust

The public’s belief that what they are watching is real. Integrity failures are ultimately failures of trust.

Duty of care

The responsibility of coaches, organizations and institutions to protect the health, safety and well-being of those in their charge. It is not a license for total control.

Definitions from the Ethics Cases glossary.

Discussion questions

1. Is resting a healthy player for injury prevention ethically different from benching to improve draft odds?
2. Does the 65-game rule unfairly pressure players to play when they should rest?
3. Is it fair to penalize the worst teams in the lottery?
4. Should the commissioner have power to change a team's draft position?
5. Who should decide whether a player can play: the team, the player or the league?

Sources

1. NBA draft lottery — Wikipedia
2. Adam Silver discusses new policy as load management goes 'too far' — NBA.com
3. Player Participation Policy — NBA
4. More details emerge on new NBA CBA, including details on 65-game threshold for awards — NBC Sports
5. NBA fines Jazz and Pacers — NBA Communications
6. NBA Board of Governors approves new Draft Lottery system to address tanking — NBA.com
7. Inside the NBA's plan to revamp the Draft Lottery — NBA.com
8. Washington Wizards win 2026 NBA Draft Lottery (AP) — NBA.com